A female sanitation worker poses in Taipei on July 13 last year.一位女清潔隊員去年七月十三日於台北留影。

Photo: Lin Hsiang-mei, Liberty Times照片：自由時報記者林相美

Greater Tainan’s Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) recently recruited 126 new temporary sanitation workers, but out of the 817 women who applied, only one was given a job. City councilors are saying that the hiring process allegedly discriminates against women, making it practically meaningless for women to apply.

EPB boss Chang Huang-chen says that the agency had initially considered guaranteeing jobs for women, but says that regulations in the Act of Gender Equality in Employment and the Employment Services Act keep them from doing so. The agency follows the same standards as Taipei and other counties and cities for the recruiting process, which stipulate that men should be able to carry sandbags weighing 15kg and women should be able to carry 12kg as part of the physical examination process. Women usually account for around 20 percent of the top 100 candidates. More than 2,000 people applied for jobs this time, but out of the more than 800 women who applied only one was actually hired.

“I’m a woman, so I’m personally dissatisfied with the results of the test, and hope that the way the test is carried out will be altered to get better, more satisfactory results in the future,” Chang says.

Last week, Greater Tainan councilors Hung Yu-feng and Chen Wen-ke held a press conference, criticizing the EPB’s hiring procedures for being fair on the surface but actually discriminating against women.

Hung says that the overall recruitment process is fair but quite cruel toward women, “Pretty much leaving all of the women who apply high and dry.” Although it ostensibly seems like there are no barriers against women, they are effectively guilty of gender discrimination. “Twelve kilograms is quite heavy. I couldn’t even run carrying that much weight.”

TODAY’S WORDS
今日單字

1. alter v.

改變；更改 (gai3 bian4; geng1 gai3)

例: The book altered the public’s perception of the entire war.

(這本書改變了民眾對這場戰爭的看法。)

2. unfair adj.

不公平的 (bu4 gong1 ping2 de5)

例: It’s unfair to expect her to know that. She wasn’t even there.

(預設她該知道這件事不公平。她當時根本不在場。)

3. discriminatory adj.

歧視的；差別對待的 (qi2 shi4 de5; cha1 bie2 dui4 dai4 de5)

例: They are protesting against the company’s discriminatory hiring policies.

(他們正在抗議這間公司歧視性的聘僱規則。)

Chen says that while women carry less than men in the exam, women are also generally not as physically strong as men, adding that not having different standards for different age groups and weight divisions is completely unfair to older people and women, particularly when you have 20-year-olds competing against 50-year-olds and people who weigh 50kg up against people who weigh 100kg.

Huang Mei-hui, secretary-general of Tainan City’s Department of Labor Affairs, says that setting hiring restrictions based on age would be discriminatory and arouse concerns, but says that it is something that definitely requires more legal discussion. Exactly how many kilograms a person should be able to lift to qualify for a job should ultimately be left to the department that is responsible for hiring to decide, Huang says.